Comparison Details

Bluehost offers a one-size-fits-all plan with lots of features and tools focused towards a large number of customer types. Go Daddy offers packages geared toward helping new website owners get started with their first website.

1. Company Info

Bluehost is a medium sized company that has been around for a long time and has grown a lot in the past few years. Go Daddy is the first hosting company to become a household name through their advertising.

Bluehost

Bluehost was founded in 1996, is based in Provo, Utah, and has over 200 employees. They currently have over 2 million customers and 3.5 million hosted domains. They are a well established web host who has grown substantially in the past few years.

Go Daddy

Go Daddy was founded in 1997, is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, and has over 3400 employees. They currently have over 11 million customers and 55 million hosted domains. GoDaddy is a widely recognized hosting company and may be the most popular in the World. They are the #1 ICANN-accredited domain registrar.

2. Plans and Prices

Both companies push their shared server hosting. Bluehost gives you everything upfront in one plan while Go Daddy offers their services in packages. Both companies offer shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting, but the prices and features are different for each. Bluehost gives you more features and a different control panel, while Go Daddy packages their services and has separate control panels for each.

3. Control Panel and User Experience

Both Bluehost and Go Daddy have good design but at Bluehost it is easier to find what you need and figure out the control panel. Go Daddy has a custom control panel for each of their products which is difficult to navigate.

Bluehost

Bluehost uses a widely popular hosting control panel called cPanel. cPanel is clean and well organized. It's still based on the basic cPanel design, with old icons, but overall it looks good. A toolbar at the top makes it easy to access Server, Email, Website, FTP, Databases, and Manage IP's areas.

Go Daddy

Go Daddy has a more confusing control panel than Bluehost. Each section like email, domains or billing all have to launch into a separate control panel which adds a layer of complexity. Go Daddy has a fair amount of features with the basic plan, but not nearly as many as Bluehost.

4. Installing and Managing Joomla

Bluehost and Go Daddy have easy and effective ways to install and manage Joomla, but the methods differ. I don't consider either of them better in this regard, but I do have a preference.

Bluehost

At Bluehost you have the option to use either SimpleScripts one-click installer or the manual method to install Joomla. SimpleScripts was developed by Bluehost and is great for installing Joomla if you never have before.

I prefer to install Joomla manually. This requires the MySQL Databases application along with File Manager to create the databases and move the installation files into place. The manual process gives you more control over the installation.

Go Daddy

For installing Joomla at Go Daddy you can use either Hosting Connection one-click installer, or you can use the manual install method. Hosting Connection is up to date and installs a clean, ready to go version of Joomla.

To install Joomla at Go Daddy manually, it's essentially the same steps as Bluehost but uses different applications.

5. Performance

I only have performance data for a website hosted at Bluehost at this time. It has moderate speed and incredible uptime.

Bluehost

My results for the website at Bluehost are 1.86 seconds average response time and 100% uptime over a thirty day period. The average response time is decent but would be better if caching and CDN's were utilized. The uptime is too good to be true coasting at 100%. No hosting company can keep their uptime at 100%, but Bluehost is doing a damn good job with it so far.

6. Technical support

At both Bluehost and Go Daddy you are given access to 24/7 support via phone and ticket support. Bluehost has one up on GoDaddy and that is because they have Live Chat.

Bluehost

The primary way I talk with hosting companies is through Live Chat. That's mainly because I can get the answers I need without holding a phone to my ear and it's easier to troubleshoot on the internet with two hands free. Their live chat is very helpful and friendly.

I have talked to tech support on the phone and they went over and beyond to help me resolve me issue.

I have never used the ticket system.

Go Daddy

You won't find Live Chat at Go Daddy which is a bummer for me.

I have talked to their phone support before and had a great experience though.

Their ticket system took around 13 hours to get me a response.

Conclusion

Bluehost gives you more features, is easier to use and has better technical support. I would choose Bluehost every time and that's simply because I like using cPanel, and getting support via Live Chat.

Steven is a Joomla web developer and worked with Joomla since the Mambo days. He has built websites for startup businesses all the way to for Fortune 500 companies. A graduate of Georgia Tech in Chemical Engineering, he now happily spends his time building websites and reviewing all types of technology.

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